How To Use a Pressure Washer | Professional Tips & Tricks

this Chris yo painter here on paint Life TV today I'm going to be pressure washing a large uh commercial building out here a stuckle building so I'm going to give you some tips and tricks when it comes to your pressure washing if you've never run a pressure washer before it's not too complicated but there are some simple steps you know to know you know when it uh when it comes to pressure washing so I came out here first off you need to find the water source so I got a water source around the other side of the building if you are pressure washing at home your home home owner your standard faucet water's going to come right out of that faucet if you're out on a commercial site one thing that's important a lot of commercial buildings have keys that actually run the water source so make sure you have something like that to actually turn on the water cuz there's not a standard faucet on it and it's kind of like a safety measure so somebody can't just come in the middle of the night you know steal water or um just turn on the water leave it on so here's my two pressure washing guns the two tips that I use I use a straight tip also use a rotating tip there are a lot of tip options out there you'll and like a yellow tip white tip black tip and basically what they are is they they throw out different size fan patterns and I just don't feel like they wash and clean as well as a rotating tip they also have a tendency to leave streaks on fences concretes and stuff like that but any tip any pressure washing tip could do severe damage if you don't know how to use them a rotating tip it's it's a ceramic tip that rotates inside and it sends out a rotating pattern that actually agitates the surface really well and cleans it better than any of the other tip options out there you can do a lot of damage with a tip like this very simple learning curve to just not getting too close start um far back and then work your way to where you're seeing it comfortably rotating flooding and agitating the surface don't start off by getting like a foot and a half from like a window a window screen or siding and then pull the trigger cuz you could literally just tear the siding up and I know that from experience I've done it employees have done it literally like 5 minutes you'll figure it out just start back work your way to the house same with a straight tip you get too close you literally could just blow a hole right in the siding or just blow a bunch of Stucker like right off the building but you can do the same thing with fan tips where the fan tip just doesn't have um like with a straight tip you know the distance that the effective cleaning distance is really short but I just don't like the fan tips once again because they have a tendency to stripe concrete really bad not agitate or clean the surface you very good two tip options the mighty M this is the mighty M rotating tip it actually has a filter in it right here so if you're using irrigation water it's good to have a filter on your tip cuz if you don't have a filter on your pressure washer you could actually clog your tip so there is a filter in there that every now and then needs to be checked and clean so I got my wand ready to go got my water source uh hoses I typically if I've got a large building I'm going to have multiple hoses so I don't have to move my pressure washer around all the time I'll typically hook up maybe like three 50ft hoses so I have 50 ft of Hose hooked up to my pressure washer going to get that all hooked up now you don't want to start your pressure washer first without having a water source attached to it because that is what actually cools the pump so you can ruin the pump on a pressure washer if there's no water source hooked up to it and it's running or if you have a water source hooked up to it and you lay your gun down and it's running and you let it run for say like 5 minutes you can actually burn up the pump you got to every now and then pull the trigger to allow water to run through the pump to cool off that pump and literally I know from experience cuz I burned up a pump before myself from letting it run without cooling it off for a period of time we'll get down to the pump itself right here this is the pressure washer right here 3200 psi pressure washer 2.4 Gall per minute I used um pressure washers as large as 5,000 uh PSI with 4 gallons a minute now the size-wise the larger pressure washer you can use the faster you're going to be able to pressure wash because it's just going to put more water up onto the building onto the substrate it's going to be able to flood it faster so here it is the pressure washer just a small one I actually like this one cuz if I'm pressure washing by myself and I'm just using my truck I can actually put this in the back of my truck without having a second person my larger one that's 4,000 PSI 4 gallons a minute I can't lift it up all by myself so this model just makes it convenient I can actually grab it lift it put it in the truck so it's going to take gasoline so this is my gas tank right here if your pressure washer has been sitting for a long period of time say all winter long the gasoline's probably not going to be good want to empty the gasoline out put new fresh gasoline in the pressure washer got gasoline in it there's a few components we can see this is how I actually start the pressure washer so this is my you know pull string that starts it there's going to be an onoff switch some place on the pressure washer I located my onoff switch right here you're just going to turn it to the on position to get the thing to run you've got some hookups right here I've got a water source my water is going to come in right here and you'll notice you'll know the Water Source because there's usually a screen right here that will fil do filtering so the water's going to come in that screen can filter it cuz if you're not hooked up to say City Water what we have out here a lot is um we have uh canals in a lot and people will have you know backyard faucets that's not actually City water it's the canal water and that con Canal water can actually send debris into your pressure washer and could damage your pressure washer so so make sure that screen is there on there and available then it's going to come in and the Outsource right here water's going to be coming out right there that's where I'm going to hook up my pressure washer hose that usually has a quick quick release fitting on it another thing I want to locate is someplace there's going to be the ability to adjust the pressure on your pressure washer I always run it at full pressure but you never know maybe at some point in time you're going to want to lower the pressure right here it just has plus and a it doesn't tell you what PSI and I've never seen a pressure that pressure washer myself and use one that actually told me the PSI but if I want to turn it down I'm just going to rotate this minus eventually if I turn it all the way it's going to just shut it completely off and it'll go full pressure is all of a sudden it'll just stop now that's full pressure and it just has a plus and a minus has the arrows pointing the plus and minus typically every pressure washer is going to have a choke right here so choke I'm going to turn it to choke I always have to choke it initially when I first start it once it's been run and warmed up I don't have to actually hit the choke so I'm going to flip it to the on position it does have a speed right here so this is the speed of the pressure washer I as soon as I purchase the pressure washer I always just put it at full speed never ever touch that I mean there's never really a time I ever want to slow this thing down I want to just be flooding the building with a lot of water no matter what I'm pressure washing so I literally never mess with that there is a gas on off valve right here so this will turn the gas on or off so typically if you're traveling anywhere with a pressure washer or it's winter time it's good just to shut it to the off position but literally I actually never mess with it as soon as I buy the pressure washer turn the gas to on and I never touch it anymore after that so it has oil in it and hydraulic fluid when you first purchase it you're going to put um the oil in it if it's not in there the hydraulic fluid you're going to put them in there and it's just good to go you don't have to actually change that stuff for years so you don't never need to mess with it it's good to actually just unscrew it and actually check the level you know if you haven't used your pressure washer for a long time you know make sure there is oil in there CU you can really damage the pressure washer you know if it doesn't have any oil but now that's everything on the pressure washer we've got our engine and we have our pump right here get ready to go we have grommets right here that actually hold tips right here but I keep my tips with me on my gun and there you have that got pneumatic Wheels if they are you know flat and you're using a big pressure washer you'll pump them up I think mine are just solid rubber right here so here we go we're going to get pressure washing we're going to show you what it looks like and how easy it is to get this thing up and running all right so I'm going to begin hooking up my hoses so I'm going to hook up this my pressure washer hose I'm going to hook up my water hose my water water source don't want to turn on anything till I get my hoses and my gun hooked up otherwise water's just going to be shooting everywhere so if I hook up my water and not and if I don't hook up my pressure washer hose water will just start shooting out right here so I'm going to hook that up got pressure washer hose hooked up got my gun hooked up now I'm ready to turn on the water make sure there's no kinks in your hose if you get any kinks in your hose at any point in time it's going to stop flow to the pump and the pump will get hot so you want to keep keep it running so now I'm going to get ready to fire up my pressure washer so the pump itself you know it definitely it has to Prime so it has to get all the air out you know actually struggle for a while like um priming itself and getting the air out to help it out you actually just take run your pressure washer until you can get all the air bubbles out and you'll see eventually I'm going to have a nice steady stream of water as it's purging their air out so I got a nice steady stream of water now when I get ready to start my pressure washer I'm also going to hold on to the trigger squeeze the trigger cuz there won't be any compression behind the engine and the pump if you actually you'll pull the trigger down and pull at the same time so want to make sure it's on want to make sure my choke is on on now I'm going to start it soon as I start it take the choke off so I do want to give you a little um little Pro tip too so there is a little black o-ring inside your um quick releases that if you don't have a tip on here and you pull the trigger the force could actually blow that O-ring out and you won't know until you go put on the tip and then all of a sudden water starts shooting all over the place so you should actually never pull the trigger until you have a tip you know in there another thing is this is a major safety issue with a pressure washer you probably literally could put somebody in the hospital or possibly even kill somebody you know with one of these small tips like this if the tip is not locked into place if it's not locked into place and the quick release is a little bit loose you pull 4,000 PSI is going to shoot this thing out of your pressure washing gun like a bullet and we it's it's actually happened to me two times in my career where I didn't have it locked in place and I just pointed up in the air shot it and the thing was in a neighborhood and it was long gone thing is don't ever point this hit somebody and pull the trigger you really shouldn't point at the air because it's going to have to come down you should point it out the ground when you pull the trigger initially when the pressure washer is running make sure you put put it in make sure it's locked into place and then spray so here we go